


beijing

by candybank



Series: concrete jungle (human zoo) [3]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Prison AU, Smut, Violence, everyone just knows each other bec....jail, not all relationships are necessarily romantic, this was supposed to be a guard wonwoo inmate mingyu prison au pwp so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-11-15 08:47:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18070208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candybank/pseuds/candybank
Summary: here's to burning golden bridges and waging holy wars.(or: a godless believer, a corrupt police officer, a fallen angel and a ghost walk into a bar.)





	1. action, reaction and chain reaction

**Author's Note:**

> hi im gonna c+p my author note from part one of this series bec its all i wanna say about this fic:
> 
> (watched too much oitnb and here we are
> 
> HI wow i am super excited for this fic bec its the first fic ever that ive actually outlined and planned and plotted and BETA'd ish...kind of, and if u know me u know i never plan any of my fics..ever..like if its not finished in 2 mins i drop it but ive been at this for some time and...im still here so..2019 is the year of growth ig..but pls dont expect anything from me same trashcan different day haha 
> 
> HEY thanks to my friends the poor guys that i force to read and review my ugly ass wips ashi, titany, t, sofina ur all troopers and i lubv u to the end of the world. AND ofc to the bestest best beta ever???? like i cant i cannot believe.....cia ur amazin.)
> 
> ANYWAY so yeah yeah yeah theres part one and part two that are like prequels to this. also proceed with caution its a prison au so all that entails. theres explicit violence, a brother seeing his brother in the middle of a sexual act and frequent mention/use of drugs so if ur uncomfy w/these turn back now
> 
> if ur still here, lets go chaptered planned fic lets go

“where _the_ _fuck_ is it?” junhui storms into mingyu’s cell at half-past three on a tuesday, eyes burning and jaw tight, teeth clenched like it’s winter and he’d just come from being held underwater.

knuckles white—as if he’s dying to break his fist into something.

he slams the door shut, the sound of it booming through Cell Block One like thunder, but no one comes running. and as mingyu blinks his eyes awake, he knows no one will, because junhui leads cell block one in chains and collars, with the guards at his beck and call too. no one turns a head, or bats an eye, or tells him what he can or can’t do.  _wen junhui_ — forty years for the murder of his aunt, twenty for the homicide of his brothers, fifteen for smuggling drugs across the border, two for petty theft. no one really knows who he is or where he came from, just that anyone who can think to ask is too scared to ask.

haphazardly, purposefully, junhui grabs a fistful of mingyu’s orange shirt and drags him off of the bed with all the strength of a single skinny arm.

“where’s my _fucking_ shit, kim?,” he spits as he tears the room apart, “i know you took it you _f_ ucking _p_ iece of _shit_.”

he sounds frustrated, and for a moment, somewhere between his ankle hitting the edge of the bedframe and his hip cracking against cement, mingyu thinks wen junhui is capable of human emotion. but then there’s the loud bang of a metal cabinet being pushed to the floor, and suddenly mingyu can’t hear anything over the sound of his heart pounding.

junhui tosses his room. books and papers torn, everything hitting the wall, crashing. he’s looking for something—for pills he’s supposed to be selling, for candy he’s supposed to be giving, for money that went missing, but he looks again and again and he finds nothing. and he doesn’t waste his time trying to say anything else.

no warning signs or yellow lights, junhui turns around and swings hard at mingyu’s face—fist landing right at the hard curve of his cheek. the sound of junhui’s knuckles hitting his fellow inmate’s bone echoes off of all four corners of the cell. and he does it again—nothing but sheer force and adrenaline pumping through his veins, junhui rams his knuckles against mingyu’s face again, cutting through skin.

blood drips out of an open wound but junhui doesn’t feel sated, so he does it again, again, _again_ , fist aimed right at mingyu’s nose, at his eyes, wanting to break him, wanting to peel back his skin. holding him up by his shirt, junhui  punches him once, and again, and _again_ , jamming his anger into every crack and crevice between mingyu’s bones until mingyu’s nose is broken and bleeding, cut cheek and bruised eye.

and suddenly, he lunges at junhui.

if anyone had been around to see it, they wouldn’t have believed it. who would believe that a deer bites a lion back?

but mingyu tackles junhui hard, pinning his spine to the ground, as if he’s trying to bury his body into the tiny cracks on the cement floor. he’s much bigger, much heavier, and he’d caught junhui completely off-guard, so nothing about this is hard to do. nothing about sitting on his  chest, all of his weight pressed against junhui’s ribcage. nothing about keeping him down, breaking his nose or splitting his lip or making his eyeballs bleed.

nothing about thinking this is self-defense, junhui is a prick, it’s not that he deserves this, just that he’s a fucking prick and mingyu stole from him but he’s a fucking asshole and he came looking for what’s his, but mingyu has nothing to give him because he already sold his shit, and mingyu has nothing to give him except a fight. so, here’s a fight, like a consolation prize, like a sorry, we’re five cents short, do you mind?

adrenaline shoots up to his eyes, makes the world go black, and mingyu doesn’t remember much about it—about guards running in, pulling him away, a million volts through his body and bright lights over his head.

when he wakes up three days later, the walls are too gray and the ceiling is too high for his room to look like his room. he doesn’t remember much about anything, and he doesn’t know how much time has passed.

he squints to see a single ray of sunlight drafting in through a small window too high up for him to reach. mingyu stares at the ceiling, tries to really see it, and when his neck hurts from straining, he closes his eyes to will the pain away.

he thinks he might have gotten out, found himself in a lighthouse,  that’s why the ceiling is so high. that’s why the walls are gray and thick, to keep the water out, to keep the night quiet when the waves are too loud. he closes his eyes, and he thinks, if he listens hard enough he can hear the ocean, boats pulling onto the shore, into the pier, old men and old ladies talking loudly about the fish, and the news, and what to eat for dinner.

“kim. lunch,” booms a voice, too near and too young. then there’s a loud _bang!_ , as if something hitting metal. he thinks, are the ships here? are the ships coming to shore?

there’s the sound of something flipping close then shut, something small, like an opening in a metal door. mingyu closes his eyes, and he thinks, if he listens hard enough, he can hear the ships honking their horns. if he listens hard enough, it feels like home.

mingyu opens his eyes, and he sees a tray of gray slop on the gray floor at the bottom of a gray door. lines drawn on the wall in red. he walks up to the other end of the room to count the lines—thirty bunches of four horizontal lines crossed out diagonally. one-hundred-fifty days. at the end of the last row, there’s a star, and mingyu looks closer.

the door opens wide, light flooding in from the hallway, a man in gray wearing all of the brightness like a second skin seconds away from peeling, “let’s go, inmate.”

 

***

 

“i hear he went crazy.”

“ _three_ months in solitary? i haven’t seen him—i’m still not convinced he didn’t kill himself.”

“maybe jun mashed his brain so hard it turned into potatoes.”

“wait, wasn’t jun the one who got beat up? shua told me that a guard told him that jun was too busted to send to solitary so they put him in medical for like, a month.”

“not surprised. mingu has, what, a hundred pounds on him?”

a buzzer rings across cell block one to warn everyone that the gate is opening. there’s the sound of old metal scraping against old metal, then the chatter simmering to a stop—to absolute silence. in walks kim mingyu, gelled hair and pearly whites traded for a scraggly half-beard and an overdue haircut, far from the golden guard dog he was just weeks before, looking everything like candy that rotted off of junhui’s arm. he’s holding sheets, a mattress and a pillow, and there is a guard standing behind him.

“i don’t know whose knobs you greased to get back in here but welcome back, kim. number one-seven-zero. your old cell.”

 

***

sometimes the pressure seeps into his skin and twists his stomach into knots, sometimes it crawls into his dreams and turns nights into nightmares. some days the weight of responsibility feels just as heavy as a baton to the balls for being a baggie short in sales, or a baseball bat to the ribs for one of _your_ men was caught by one of _my_ men carrying a cellphone and now they’ve launched a full-scale investigation and we have to lay low and i won’t have anything for you for at least two weeks.

but this, jeonghan on his knees, lips, shiny with spit, wrapped around his cock because mingyu is the king and the prison doll doesn’t fuck anyone but the king—this makes _everything_ worth it. this makes mingyu forget, for a fraction of a second, that he’s about to have nothing, and the guard funneling in his supplies might get shipped away or sent into prison with him, and in the matter of a day, he will have become absolutely and completely fucked.

but this, jeonghan like this, sparkly blonde head bobbing up and down, cheeks hollow, eyelashes fluttering like string, it makes mingyu forget anything.

the tip of his cock hits the back of jeonghan’s throat, and jeonghan makes a strangled noise—a moan and a gagging sound, like he’s about to vomit. it’s loud enough that someone might have heard it from outside the open door of their shared cell. loud enough that someone might have heard it and thought hey, there’s something to see here, maybe if i pass by and look innocent enough, it’ll look like an accident that i saw them.

seconds pass, then another, then jeonghan slows down because mingyu hasn’t said anything—hasn’t yelled at whoever it was that made the trip to their doorway to stop, to stare. he slows to almost a pause, and dramatically, gracelessly, mingyu grabs a fistful of his hair, slams his skull down to the bones of his hips as he pushes his bones into his skull. whiplash hits fast, and jeonghan has to shut his eyes and grip mingyu’s thighs so he won’t fall off of the quick-spinning earth.

“you should have a guard here,” comes a familiar voice, too soft and far away to be mingyu. jeonghan is too dizzy yet to recognize it, so he moans around the dick in his mouth as a _who is it_?

“you can stay there—shua,” the vibration of jeonghan’s mouth makes mingyu stutter. and jeonghan relaxes, finds a pace to steady himself to.

and joshua, yoon jisoo, inmate 1187962, not keen on seeing his brother like this, who only came up to ask mingyu something about some other, to say something about thanks for getting me back from cell block two, he keeps his eyes on mingyu’s. “no thanks,” he humors the joke.

mingyu grins, all toothy. “what do you need?”

joshua sighs, “it can wait. looks like you’re almost done, anyway. i’ll circle around. be back in five.

be gentle, alright.”

mingyu nods, and joshua strolls away then. jeonghan keeps from rolling his eyes, steadying his attention, instead, on his burning lungs, on pushing mingyu’s hips so he can get a little give, slide his tongue down the slit of his cock so he can fucking finish already.

because jeonghan is starting to feel sweat pool on the surface of his skin, and sweating makes him feel disgusting.

“you like that? your brother seeing you like this?”

and though mingyu had gone through the trouble of making his voice low and sexy, jeonghan has to slide his mouth up and off of his dick to answer, “jesus, no. stop ruining this for me or i’ll bite your dick off.” jeonghan, eyebrows scrunched in annoyance and disgust, he looks up so mingyu can see him. and mingyu swears he could have come right then, at how disappointed jeonghan looked, how annoyed and angry and—

but jeonghan knows him, and he squeezes the base of his cock tightly between his fingers to coax a strangled groan out of him.

“ _fuck_ —“ mingyu squeaks. jeonghan takes the apology and sinks his cock back into his mouth. once down, throat-deep, then again, again, again, again, again—

mingyu mutters something incomprehensible, eyes shutting tight and teeth sinking into the flesh of his lips so hard that the surface of his skin almost breaks into blood, before shooting white hot down his roommate’s throat. there’s the shaking of his bones, returning to his body, quivering thighs turning back to steel. and jeonghan, who thinks that the only thing worse than sweat anywhere near his face is semen anywhere near his face, he digs his nails so deep into mingyu’s thighs that pushing him away becomes easy.

as if a knee jerk reaction, mingyu tears a handful of tissue from the toilet paper roll and gives it to jeonghan. to spit in, to wipe his mouth with. and jeonghan, he gets back up on his feet, spits and spits and wipes his mouth, and he pulls his shirt back on,

and mingyu, standing in place, pulling his pants back up, he stares at jeonghan with wide eyes, as if he’s waiting for something—direction, command,  written instruction.

jeonghan walks to the mirror, cleans his face off, spits into the sink and looks to mingyu through his reflection.

“try that again,” jeonghan says warningly, voice dangerously low, words shooting right up mingyu’s veins and into his spine. a chill, like a low high, like he wishes the human body worked better so he could get hard five seconds after coming hard.

“… sorry.”

eyes still on his reflection, jeonghan pulls on his powder blue cardigan and smooths his yellow hair down. a grin pulls at his lips, too small for mingyu to see. it’s as if the world has stopped spinning around them, the moment waiting to crack, to break.

jeonghan walks back to mingyu, tilting his head just slightly when they talk. gently, he takes mingyu’s chin between his thumb and index finger, smiling softly when he whispers, “don’t worry,” he cups mingyu’s face and drags his thumb lovingly across his cheek, mingyu keening into his touch, “i’ll make you.”

 

***

 

day turns quickly into night when there is nothing to do but sell heroine and coke across two cell blocks, and worry about how there will be no more heroine and coke to sell the next morning. soon the sun goes, cell doors are shut tight, lights are turned off.

jeonghan digs his nails deep into mingyu’s skin, then drags his claws down as if he’s trying to tear him apart. scraping red along the dips and curves of his body, as if he’s trying to carve into his flesh. he follows the ridges of mingyu’s hipbones, the low dip of his skeleton, scratching down, down, _down_ —reaching between his thighs.

steady hand, he wraps his fingers around the base of mingyu’s cock. one rough tug, one cry muffled against the shirt that jeonghan had tied around his mouth.

tears well at the corners of mingyu’s eyes, and jeonghan leans down, down, _down_ to lick at them—drinking in the sight of him, the taste of his skin, the taste of his tears. mingyu whimpers, body jerking involuntarily against the restraints holding his arms and feet to the corners of the bed, and jeonghan sinks his thumb deeper down the slit of his cock.

 _jeonghan please_ — _please_ — _please—_ , says the strangled noise that escapes mingyu’s throat. and jeonghan answers with a nail pushed too deep into him, mingyu’s hips bucking up, precome messy and wet all over jeonghan’s hands.

a low laugh flutters past jeonghan’s lips, his eyes bright with amusement that mingyu can’t see.

“look at me,” he instructs, placing a gentle kiss onto each of mingyu’s closed eyelids, and so they flutter open to see into the dark.

“you like that?” jeonghan says, mimicking his words from the morning, and mingyu’s body is burning too hot to let him think of the right answer. he nods, shakes his head, the lump in his throat straining against his skin so tightly that jeonghan thinks to help him, slit his neck and set him free.

it’s a dream that tastes good on his tongue, tastes like blood, like helping someone, like a mess but if mingyu dies, who’s going to clean up after his mess?

he frowns at the thought of his loss, and plants a gentle kiss onto the very center of mingyu’s neck, instead. mingyu’s adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows hard, jeonghan pressing his lips against it, biting lightly between his teeth.

tooth enamel is the strongest substance in the body, jeonghan thinks to himself. it’s stronger than bone and can gnash through steel—“you look so good like this, minnie,” he grins, keeping from chewing purple love bites into mingyu’s skin or tearing out the strings in his neck that hold his body together. “i could just eat you up,” he whispers, licking a stripe up from mingyu’s clavicle to the tip of his chin.

mingyu’s cock strains against jeonghan’s lose grip, and it makes jeonghan laugh. gently, he removes the gag holding mingyu’s words together.

“ _fuckmeplease_ —“ mingyu gasps breathlessly as soon as his tongue is free. “jeonghanplease—fuck me—hannie, _i’msorryplease_ —insideme i want you inside me allofyou please _fuck_ —please f—“

“shh, shh, shh,” jeonghan whispers softly, leaning down to press delicate kisses along mingyu’s ear. and mingyu, wrung so dry that he’s practically heaving, he bites his lip so hard that his teeth bleed.

“look at you,” jeonghan drawls into his neck, “big, strong, king mingyu. … big, bad wolf mingyu. … scary prison gang boss mingyu,” he chuckles, patronizing—the humiliation going straight to mingyu’s dick. “begging for _my_ dick like a helpless little—“ he looks too long into mingyu’s eyes and laughs.

kind, benevolent, jeonghan lets up—climbs down mingyu’s body to spread his knees apart, to push his own pants down, stroke himself fully hard and push the tip of his cock against where it makes mingyu throw his head back, makes his chest heave, his fists clench and toes curl.

“ _relax_ ,” jeonghan laughs, reaching up to put mingyu’s gag back in place. mingyu’s throat bleeding from how hard his voice strains against the quiet.

 

***

 

mingyu wakes up too early for a friday. dawn has barely cracked when he climbs out of bed and into his white shirt and orange jumpsuit. he sits on the stool, and stands by the door, and paces across the room until he wakes jeonghan up.

“doors won’t open for an hour,” jeonghan stirs awake, voice raspy and small with sleep. but he sits up in attention, rubbing his eyes awake to get a better look at mingyu. “why are you up?”

mingyu’s silence is response enough. jeonghan climbs off of the top bunk and slips right into his space, arms slinking around his waist. “today’s the day?”

“yeah,” mingyu says, willing himself to return the hug, pushing his hand up to rub jeonghan’s back. “i ‘gotta see if kim comes into work today.”

jeonghan nods, smiling up at mingyu when he pulls away. he takes mingyu’s chin and makes him tilt his head down for a kiss. “it’ll be okay.”

but when mingyu empties the kitchen and rounds to the delivery area, there is no one and nothing but guards that don’t like him and craters of vegetables that need to be carried in.

“ _fuck_ —“ he slams his hand against the stair railing at lunch, and everyone tries not to, but everyone looks at him, including the unfamiliar face in the gray uniform from across the room.

he’s not the smartest crayon in the box, but it doesn’t take too much to put the puzzle together. the guard across the room, the one staring at him, the one he’s staring back at, this is the guard that they replaced his supplier with.

he’s not that big, and barely as tall. he has droopy, innocent eyes and a dorky haircut. there’s something about the way he walks that makes mingyu think a fight against him wouldn’t be much of a fight.

and he’s new, and the inmates need something to do because withdrawal is upon them, and the sweat is starting to break, so mingyu gathers the welcome wagon.

pushed by six large inmates into a corner of the prison where no one can hear him scream, mingyu notices that the new prison guard doesn’t break.

 **W. JEON** , says the nameplate on his right breast pocket.

he should be begging for something now, crying or hysterical or pressed against the floor. but there’s only the same droopy look in his eyes, which mingyu now sees is more malignant than innocent, and there’s a small, easy grin cracked across his thin lips.

“let’s be smart about this,” he says, looking right at mingyu, tilting his head to one side, “about sixty percent of the cut for the first six months smart?”

 


	2. twisting, turning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> when a nation exalts god, god will exalt the nation.

jeon wonwoo is a product of his environment—at least, that’s what the books might say if anyone ever wrote books about him, but no one writes books about people like him. no one writes about sad accidents left in group homes by parents who never cared about each other, or even knew each other’s names; who never cared about their child, or even knew that he was born, or even gave him a name.

he’s a fluke, not a fairytale, and the old woman running the orphanage, sixty-year-old miss lee, with her gray hair and gray eyes and twitching bright-red lips, who's always carrying a stick in one hand and a stack of envelopes in the other, who named him wonwoo after the last kid that stayed in his room, who raises him on corporal punishment and verbal abuse, she tells him that he was born lucky. 

but she tells him you were born lucky, wonwoo, you have a roof over your head, a bed to sleep on, clothes on your back and food on your plate.

he’s not sure that he wants to call the leaky ceiling and peeling wallpaper, _home_ , or the moldy mattress and tick-infested pillow, a _bed_ , or the red goop that they make him eat, _food_ , or the tattered shirts that they make him wear, _clothing_ —he’s not sure that he wants to call trying to survive day-by-day, living—but he spends the first twelve years of his life trying to believe her, anyway.

 

***

 

he runs away at thirteen, and no one comes looking for him.

roads bend and break and bend again, and he scrapes his knees trying to find his way, but eventually, as all winding roads do, the winding road ends. he’s sixteen years old, caught shoplifting by a kind old man who takes him in instead of sending him to prison.

it’s a little lifted-out-of-a-mediocre-coming-of-age-novel, but wonwoo had dropped out of school in the fourth grade because the orphanage couldn’t afford to send him anymore, and he never really learned how to read too well.

mister park, he owns a small convenience store at the edge of the city, he says i have a spare room, my son’s gone off to the academy to become a cop, so he’s never home, so you can take his room.

he teaches wonwoo the value of money, and wonwoo says, how can i pay you back? mister park tells him to be a hardworker, open the store and close the store, and watch the store, and if a fat man in a gray uniform comes by, give him this box, and make sure he gives you this much money.

here, read this book, it’ll teach you all you need to learn about counting.

eighteen with a stable job and having read enough books to be good at math, with secrets tacked under his fingertips, wonwoo thinks that maybe miss lee was right—maybe he was born lucky, after all.

“cool car,” he nods towards the slick silver camaro waiting in the sidewalk, licking his thumb and counting cash.

“thanks,” the fat man in his gray uniform—mister kim—grins, licking his thumb and stacking brightly colored bills on top of each other.

wonwoo eyes him up and down, watching the way the dull fluorescents of the store reflect in the old scratched-up gold of his badges, thinking that light shines differently when shed upon honest men. **KIM, Y.,** says the nameplate on his right breastpocket. it’s curiosity, intrigue, greed, that makes wonwoo’s eyes flicker to the car outside, to the man in front of him, to the mysterious brown box and the handfuls of money in between them.

“are you a cop?” he asks, although he already knows the answer, “i didn’t know cops made so much money.”

“i’m a prison guard,” mister park laughs, “and no, they don’t. no one makes money enforcing the law.”

 

***

 

wonwoo is smart, sharp. he can read a room in the blink of an eye, and he knows how to spin gold from the grime lining the floors of the prison bathroom.

he’d hatched the genius idea of hiding the product in plain sight, so they tear away at the cement holding the walls together, and they bury their secrets in between the tiles—heroine, cocaine, methamphetamine and candy-rock-crack stuffed into hollow spaces behind dirty white squares. and mingyu, he fills the gaps with his heavy breathing, his quiet panting, his steady stream of wonwoo—please—‘s and ah-ah-ah’s.

and seungcheol, he stands at the doorway so no one goes in, picking broccoli from lunch out of his teeth, as if he can’t hear the loud slapping of skin, the noisy doing-of-something-they-shouldn't be doing.

 

***

 

seungcheol had asked mingyu about it somewhere between smoking crack and snorting coke and counting cash. he’d asked why do you go to wonwoo, why don’t you send jeonghan, they usually want him, right? why don’t you send the new recruit—what’s his name again, samyang?

he thinks it’s a fever dream now: mingyu’s reaction, mingyu staring at him for a moment, as if he didn’t know what to say for a moment, before carving a sneer into his mouth and saying, “because i do whatever the fuck i want, seungcheol.” sounding, to seungcheol, the way wen junhui’s shadow would sound if it could talk.

“did you get the names?” mingyu asks, and it takes seungcheol all of a moment to realize that he is in the now. and mingyu, he knows seungcheol gets like this sometimes. sugar-rushed and gone.

“what?”

“the other transfers, cheol—names?” 

“oh, oh, oh,” he snaps his fingers in recognition, as if jolted awake by a thousand volts of screaming lightning. he reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a piece of paper with chicken scratches scrawled across it in faint blue ink.

“minhyun in block three, jonghyun in block four, soonyoung in block thr—“ he stops abruptly, sudden realization and gears turning. looking up to the boy seated across the table, “that’s you,” he grins, as if they hadn’t gone through the trouble of having him transferred, before continuing on, “and a minghao in block three.

leader,” he adds belatedly, still reading off of the piece of paper.

“leader?" 

seungcheol shrugs, “i heard he’s one-out-of-two gang leaders from where they were transferred from. violent gang war. i heard two guards and a bunch of inmates died.”

“where’s the other one?” mingyu asks, to which seungcheol shrugs again.

“opposite end of the country, i’ll bet.” 

mingyu turns to soonyoung, not thinking much of the blank, nervous look in his eyes. “you know anything about this?” he asks, to which soonyoung shakes his head and says no, i don’t, no, i wasnt in any of the gangs, i hid under my bed as soon as i heard gunfire.

and mingyu thinks it’s just his luck—snagging a piece of hay from out of a needle stack.

 

***

 

“you’re tired,” jeonghan says, voice light as a feather, as he works his thumbs into the spaces between mingyu’s bones; trying to untangle knots that have been wound too tightly, trying to undo everything that mingyu has done.

and mingyu, all he can do is nod, and let his head loll to one side as all tension lifts from his shoulders like vapor from water. the weariness and the sleeplessness, they crawl out of his skin and rise out of his body, twisting into the open air and turning back into nothing.

jeonghan plants a gentle kiss onto the nape of his neck, and mingyu feels compelled to sigh. to reach behind him and hold jeonghan in some way, to thank him to some extent. and jeonghan, he leans down to kiss mingyu again, to press their lips together, to make them infinitely closer. like a serpent, or two snakes, crawling up and around a rod—the staff of Asclepius: intending to heal; or, hermes’ caduceus, trying to guide—jeonghan wraps his arms around mingyu. his palms come to rest upon mingyu’s chest, and his chin upon his shoulder.

“you need rest,” jeonghan says gently, pressing a kiss to the lobe of mingyu’s ear as if to punctuate his words, “send me to jeon tomorrow. i’m not sick anymore. it’s no problem.”

“i know,” mingyu says, closing his eyes as if it’ll help him feel at peace, scratching jeonghan’s scalp as if it’ll keep the earth spinning on its axis. he shakes his head. “it’s alright,” he says, the sound of his voice followed by a long moment of white noise. and in the pause, nothing happens—the world stirs, and faraway machines continue in their low humming of noisy songs. and mingyu, he opens his eyes, the brightness of the afternoon streaming in through the cell’s small window nearly blinding him. 

sometimes, he forgets about the sun. but jeonghan comes into view, standing in front of him, then kneeling in between his legs. all blonde and beautiful, playful smile perpetually on his lips, looking as if he’s only spending five minutes in a sandbox instead of sixty years in jail.

mingyu almost thinks to stop him, to answer the question reflected in his sparkly hazel eyes with a no, not today, maybe later, but thanks for offering. but then the thought of rejecting jeonghan echoes in his mind, and it sounds absolutely ridiculous. so, mingyu, not wanting to be ridiculous, he sits back and nods, and jeonghan, as if excited just by the prospect of him, he bites his smile and starts shimmying mingyu’s pants down to his ankles.

and mingyu, he slumps back in his seat and lets his body float away. 

“i have something else for you to do,” he says, and when he talks, it’s as if he’s hearing himself from faraway. from outside of his body, his voice garbled, as if hiding behind water. 

“what’s that?” jeonghan asks obediently as he palms mingyu through his boxers.

“minghao,” mingyu says, eyes shutting close. “ask wonwoo about him.

and go see him for yourself.”

and jeonghan, he nods, licking at cloth and teasing. mingyu’s eyes flutter open just so he can look at him when he grins and tells him, “you’ve always been a good judge of character.”

jeonghan smiles back, as a thanks, as an i know, as a “why do you think i left junhui for you?”

and he says it as if the answer is this: because you’re smart enough to get off a sinking ship before the propellers stop spinning, because you’re astute and insightful, and you know where you should be, and you know that there’s nowhere else to be but with me,

because i’m powerful now, mingyu thinks to himself as he closes his eyes again, but who knows where you’ll be tomorrow?

 

***

 

jeonghan comes to know that minghao is a flight risk with no fear of falling, a gambler with nothing to lose, an addiction. he’s the seller and the substance, the high and the crash. and if mingyu is the king of the jungle, then minghao will decidedly be the scavenger that feasts on his remains after tricking the monkeys and the donkeys into killing him.

minghao’s tongue is silver, his lips red. his eyes dark, and he sees jeonghan before jeonghan sees him.

it doesn’t take much digging—in fact, it doesn’t take any digging at all, because minghao has one of his friends pull jeonghan aside, and he tells jeonghan himself: that he has guards under his thumb, a supplier, loyal workers, loyal customers; i’ve taken over cell block three, and i’ve taken over cell block two. 

and jeonghan, who never looks at anything but what is put in front of him, he can’t keep the surprise from showing in his eyes. 

“i don’t know who you’re working for,” minghao says with a laugh, and jeonghan can tell that he’s lying—he can tell that minghao wants him to know that he’s lying. and he wonders about it, why a king would want to say that he’s a liar when history says that all great leaders gathered followers by garnering their trust. 

but jeonghan comes to find out that minghao lives by the principle of scrutiny—that he survives by seeing and studying and scrutinizing every little thing that’s put in front of him. and he comes to realize that no historic war has been won with trust; that all of them are built on blood-soaked soil, and won with deception.

“but he needs to pay more attention.”

minghao kisses him, and jeonghan comes to realize that what minghao wants is not money, not attention; what he wants is a pastime, what he wants is war—minghao says so himself—and he sends jeonghan along to deliver the message.

 

***

 

“minghao has three and two?” jeonghan tries not to start with it, but nothing else comes out when he sees mingyu. and mingyu, looking spent from the day, he’s laying in the top bunk and staring up at the ceiling. 

there’s the sound of a soft sigh, as if it’ll take too much energy to reply with words. and jeonghan, tasting minghao when he licks his lips, he walks to mingyu to give him a kiss.

“why didn’t you tell anyone? 

why didn’t you tell me?”

“it’s barely been months since jun—“ as soon as mingyu says the words, he forgets what they mean. he’s not sure how long it’s been, not sure how to count months, not sure what to call what he did to junhui. jeonghan threads their fingers together, and mingyu scratches the back of his hand with his thumb. “it’s… i can’t be losing already.”

“you haven’t lost anything,” jeonghan tells him, encouraging in the way he has to be, “besides, i heard jun was transferred, so you don’t have to worry about him.”

he smiles, as if to make things better, but nothing follows besides a long pause, a passing moment that seems unending until it ends.

jeonghan thinks to the last time he put his foot in the water. he remembers that the last time he put his foot in the water, an alligator bit off his toes. he remembers blood in the water, blood all over the floor, blood all over his clothes and jisoo's clothes. he remembers finding out that blood can’t be washed off in the sink, the red doesn’t come off, the screaming doesn’t stop. 

and he remembers junhui, staying by his side, going too far. without much thought, he pulls the sleeve of his cardigan over his fingers.

“i know what you’re thinking,” he stands closer to mingyu, punctuating his sentences with a laugh as if to make things better, “but you can’t just shiv him in the yard. he’s got a lot of friends now.”

he pauses, the quiet sounding like hesitation, “and i’m not sure about this, but i think the guard he has is seokmin.”

and jeonghan, he knows mingyu well enough to steer quickly towards something else, “put soonyoung and seungcheol in block three,” he says decisively, “have them break minghao’s monopoly. even if you get half back, that’ll be good. tell jeon to bring in more drugs for at least the next two weeks.

i know it’s a temporary solution but… we’ll figure it out along the way.”

“he wants you,” mingyu says as if he’s had an epiphany, eyebrows furrowed, he looks around their shared cell, “he wants…this.”

“he wants a war,” jeonghan tells him, “and he’s sentenced to life. he has nothing to lose.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS AGAIN to the usual prospects esp cia the bestest beta its taking me too long to write these chapters bt when ur garbage ur garbage what can u do..also thanku for reading if ur reading ur amazin ilusm AYY i hope u liked it (minghao vc)dab..also i am physically incapable of writing long chapters so chapters are prob gonna be around 2k-4 or 5k at most each..and i rewrote this like 83928392 times aha..it be like that..

**Author's Note:**

> i'll be updating this every one or two weeks (haha please dont quote me on that) so yeah yeah yeah thxthxthx for reading im excited for this


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